IBL06: Sixth Commandment

Abortion

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Genre: Speech

Track: 39

Dictation Name: RR130V39

Location/Venue: ________

Year: 1960’s-1970’s.

Our scripture is Exodus 21:22-25. Exodus 21:22-25. The subject, abortion.

Exodus 21:22 through 25.

“22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.

23 And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,

24 Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,

25 Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”

The subject of abortion is not a pleasant one. But if we were only to deal from the pulpit and from scripture with that which is pleasant we would very quickly abdicate our Christian state. We are to deal with what God requires rather than that which pleases us. Now, abortion, the destruction of the human embryo or fetus has long been regarded by biblical standards as murder, but it is significant that in recent years this stance has been radically altered.

We are very thoroughly familiar with the fact that the liberals both within Protestantism and the roman catholic church have very extensively compromised on the subject, and are ready to grant the so called right to abortion. The sad fact is, that even within evangelical circles the compromise is very deep. For example, Christianity Today a major evangelical publication which represent the Billy Graham perspective --in fact, one of the moving forces behind it is Graham’s father in-law-- had an article in the November 8, 1968 issue. This article was written, again very significantly, by Waltkey[?] of the Dallas Theological seminary.

This man’s perspective is antinomian, premillennial, dispensationalists. In this article he declares that abortion is permissible in terms of scripture. Now this is inflamed defiance of our text and of the sixth commandment. The historic grounds from the days of the old testament to the present has been the sixth commandment, Thou Shalt Not Kill, and the text which we read. Let us look at that text again as given in a very modern legally precise translation by Casuto[?]. “When men strive together and they hurt unintentionally a woman with child and her children come forth but no mischief happens, that is the woman and the children do not die, the one who hurt her shall surely be punished by a fine. But, if any mischief happens, that is if the woman dies or one of the children dies, then you shall give life for life.” It should be noticed that children is given in the plural because this is a legal statement to cover not only a child but multiple birth[s] as well.

Now let us analyse this law. Remembering that this is case law under the general principle thou shalt not kill. Remembering further that case law gives a minimal case and declares that from this minimal case if it is true here it is certainly true elsewhere. Thus this has legal implications which from the days of Moses through the early church to the present have been realized. Now first of all in this case cited, we do not have deliberate abortion. It is accidental. Two men are fighting and they fall against the woman who is pregnant and she aborts or delivers later prematurely.

This then, is a minimal case! It covers any type of case that might ensue from an accident. This entered into legal statutes all over the world; for example, in Boston just very recently there was a case in which a child was born prematurely as the result of an accident when a truck struck a car in which Mrs. [unintelligible name] was a passenger, and she won a case against the trucking company because of that. In terms of this principle which has entered into our law. Thus even in the event of an accidental abortion there is liability! There is still a crime, a legal offense. Second, this means that if there is a penalty for even accidental abortion and the penalty is death if the child be born dead, how much more is this true without possibility of exception in an induced abortion? This is of course the principle of the minimal case illustrating everything in an area.

Now third, a point that is very obvious here is that even if there be no injury to the woman or the fetus, still the man is liable to a fine and must be fined. It’s stipulated as mandatory. Now again this sets forth something of considerable importance. The law clearly protects pregnant woman and the embryo so that every pregnant woman has, in terms of biblical law, a strong hedge of law around her. For since even a mother bird with eggs or young is covered by the law, according to Deuteronomy 22 verses 6 and 7. It is clear that any tampering with the fact of birth is forbidden except where required or permitted by God’s law.

Now this legislation against abortion is unique in world history. There is nothing to compare with it outside of scripture and those legal codes which have been influenced by the Bible. It is true that occasionally you do find in some cultures laws against abortion, but they are not against abortion in principle! For example, in the Roman empire there were laws against abortion, but it was not that abortion was bad it was only a crime if and when a woman defrauded her husband of an heir, by means of abortion. Only then.

Perhaps most revealing of the attitude outside of scripture is the statement that we find in Plato and in Aristotle. These are so typical of the attitude of all pagan antiquity and of the modern world that it is well worth reading what Socrates says in Plato’s republic. And I quote: “I should make it a rule for women to bear children to the state from her twentieth year to her fortieth year. And for a man after getting over the sharpest burst in the race of life, henceforth to beget children to the state until he is fifty-five years old. If then, a man with either above or under this age shall meddle with the business of begetting children for the commonwealth, we shall declare his act to be an offense against religion and justice inasmuch as he is raising up a child for the state, who should detection be avoided instead of having been begotten under the sanction of those sacrifices and prayers which are to be offered up at every marriage ceremonial by priests and priestesses and the whole city to the effect that the children to be born may ever be more virtuous and more useful than their virtuous and useful parents who have been conceived under cover of darkness by the aid of dire incontinent.

The same law will hold, should a man who is still of age to be a father meddle with a woman who is also of the proper age without the introduction of the magistrate, we shall accuse him of raising up to the state an illegitimate unsponsored and unhallowed child. But as soon as the woman and the man are past the prescribed age we shall allow the latter I imagine to associate freely with whomsoever they please, so that it be not a daughter or a mother or a daughter’s child or grandmother. And in like manner we shall permit the woman to associate with any man except a son or a father or one of their relations in the direct line, ascending of descending, but only after giving them strict orders to do their best if possible to prevent any child happily so conceived from seeing the light. But if they cannot sometimes be helped to dispose of the infant on the understanding that the fruit of such a union is not to be reared.

‘That too is a reasonable plan, but how are they to distinguish fathers and daughters and the relations you described just now, since all the children are reared by the state? How are they to know which is their daughter or their father?’ Not at all, I replied, only all the children that are born between the 7’th and 10’th month from the day on which one of their number was married, are to be called by him if male, his sons, if female, his daughters. And they shall call him father and their children he shall call his grandchildren. These again shall call him and his fellow bridegrooms and brides grandfathers and grandmothers. Likewise, all shall regard as brother and sisters those that were born in the same period in which their own fathers and mothers were bringing them into the world.

And as we said just now, all these shall refrain from touching one another, but the law will allow intercourse between brothers and sisters if the lot chances to fall back that way and if the delegated priestess also gives her sanction.”

Now, this is substantially what Aristotle said. This is substantially also what many of the modern so called reformers have in mind. What is the principle here? There is much reference here to religion and to marriage ceremonies, sacrifices and prayers. The principle of course is that the state is God. It is the ultimate order, it is the working God of the system. Therefore the state can order abortion, infanticide, and incest, whenever it so deems advisable. There is no law beyond the state, and whatever the state decrees is therefore ipso facto morally right. Total statism.

This was the world into which the early church moved. On all sides there was this total permissibility in so far as the state decreed it was advisable. But the church condemns abortion from the very beginning! From it’s earliest days. For example the apostolic constitutions declared “Thou shalt not slay the child by causing abortion nor kill back that which is begotten, for everything that is shaped and has received a soul from God if it be slain shall be avenged as being unjustly destroyed, according to Exodus 21:23.”

Tertullian[?} for example declared that “To hinder a birth is merely a kind of man killing, nor does it matter if you take away a life that is born or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one, you have the fruit already in the seed.” Thus very early the church took a stand, in fact it would take a sizable volume just to quote the various statements of the early church fathers and of the various church councils against abortion. It was declared to be murder.

This attitude prevailed until recent years, but the modern attitude has been increasingly permissive. Beginning in the latter half of the last century some scholars began to say that there was nothing ultimately wrong with abortion, that in fact the main reason for it was not sin or murder, but it was poverty. In fact, A. E. Crawley, a distinguished anthropologist of the last century and the beginning of this century maintained and I quote: “Often as not, the sole reason is poverty.” Unquote.

Havelock Ellis saw civilization as leading to a decrease in abortion as life became more rational and scientific, and he declared that “It was not a sin, but just a primitive remedy for economic distress and for reckless sexual behavior.” But abortions have not decreased but they have increased with the spread of rationalism and science.

As a matter of fact in 1946 there was the very startling I. Nesburns abortion case in San Francisco, and the records that there were seized at that time indicated a very startling fact. The annual birth at that time in San Francisco were approximately 1600, the annual abortions, 18,000. Since then the ratio has increased markedly in favor of abortions, and the various states that have liberalized abortion laws have not found any decrease as has been admitted within the past two or three weeks in the number of illegal abortions. With the 1960’s an extensive program was begun, to gain the so called woman’s right to abortion with the U.S. public health association leading the way in the campaign.

It was pointed out that in the soviet union it was legal and that much needs to done to bring us up to the times. The courts themselves had been leading the way in recognizing these so called rights. In recognizing this so called right. Just recently, in New York, Mrs. Robert Stewart won a case against a hospital when they refused her an abortion after she had had measles and the child was born defective. She won a very sizable award against the hospital, which demonstrates the direction the law is taking.

And yet, it is interesting that at the same time, studies in primitive societies and abortion in these societies has been most telling against abortion! Even though the scholars like Doctor George Deberiou who report these findings are not particularly favorable to the Christian perspective. According to Doctor Deberiou for example; in these primitive societies the purpose of abortion seems to be revenge against the father, hatred of responsibility-- he quotes the {?} as saying “Children are a burden and we get tired of them. They destroy us.”--, as analog to suicide, as hatred of life and as hatred of men. And the motivation in very many cases is, he says, the preservation of beauty and the continued enjoyment of freedom and responsibility. And yet, interestingly enough Doctor deberiou has a chapter in this report on these primitive societies titled The Eschatology of the Fetus[?].

In other words, even these primitive societies believed that they are committing murder. And so they have various stories about the afterlife of these murdered ones. The situation today then is very, very critical, and very little attention is being paid to the objections that are being raised by some outstanding doctors. For example, a very important article which gains too little attention was written by doctor A.C. Midas of the U.C.L.A. medical schools together with his brother and published in the American Bar Association journal, and here is the resume of that article. They, the brothers, said: “Those who deplore the loss of five to ten thousand mothers annually in illegal abortions ignore the one million or more unborn children sacrificed in the process of this massive assault on human life. The brothers said that some persons would justify abortion in the case of unborn infants that would be born crippled or defective.

“Would any reputable doctor propose”, they said, “to try living cripples or mental or physical defectives? Incomparable ex parte proceedings.... start by eliminating senile parents, then the millions of blind persons. Move on to all who are bedridden, then those confined to wheelchairs, and finally those who use crutches. Proceed a gradually with a disposition of the millions who wear spectacles, who have braces, use hearing aids, are equipped with false feet, are too stout or too thin. Where draw the line between acceptable and the unacceptable of fitness?!” the Midas brothers asked. “No human being is perfect, would the world moreover really be a better place after the destruction of the millions of defective individuals? Has the world gained or lost from the services of the epileptic Michael Angelo or the deaf Edison, or the hunchback Stimeds[?], or the Roosevelt’s --both the asthmatic Theodore or the polio paralyzed Franklin--, it must be recognized abortion laws would logically be followed by {?} or legalized euthanization.

The attack on life is essentially the same.” they said. Unquote. And that of course is an excellent statement from a medical perspective of the Christian stance. Abortion places life under man and the state rather than under God. And the demand for abortion is antinomian to the core. It was very revealing that just this past week in New York when a legislative committee was holding hearings on the subject the meeting was broken up by a mob of young women. They entered, screeching and declaring they were tired of listening to men debate something that was a primary concern to women. And they shouted, what right to you men have to tell us whether we can or cannot have a child? Now that states the issue very, very tellingly.

What right? In other words, what these women were saying was that unless you could experience childbirth you have no right to legislate. Law is then derived from experience, and if you follow this to its logical conclusion then you must say no one who has not committed a murder has the right to legislate about murder. And those of us who have never thought of murder re disqualified then from legislating in this area. Only those who’ve experienced something then can legislate according to this perspective. Can anything be more deadly to law?

In other words the modern humanistic position says that the only ground for any law is experience. We began by citing someone writing in Christianity Today which is the Billy Graham voice more or less, who came from Dallas Theological Seminary, a premillennial dispensationalist school, saying that abortion is permissible and why not? Their perspective again is experience. Experiential religion, you have to have a revival experience or you’re not a Christian. In other words, the test is again experience; not the work, not the act, not the law of God! And wherever you shift things from the law word of God to experience, you become antinomian and you destroy everything.

So whether you are an open atheist --like these women-- and leftist, or whether you are someone from Dallas Theological seminary or Christianity Today, when you shift the ground to experience you are anti God. We must say therefore, that men who cannot bear children can legislate concerning childbirth because the principle of law is not our experience but the law word of God. In this and in every realm. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto thee for our law word. And we pray our Father that in these days as men make an assault on and on the life of man in every domain, Thou wouldst make us strong in Thee that we may once again establish Godly law and order. Confound, we beseech thee, these wicked ones. And frustrated their endeavors, and use us mightily unto the end that we may reestablish this end on the foundation of thy word. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, Amen.

Are there any questions now? With respect to our lesson first of all. Yes?